Local Reports, Analyses, Stuff & Inspiration From Accra

Ghanaian Member of Parliament Murdered at Home

A Member of Ghana’s Parliament has been stabbed to death by unknown assailants. Hon. Joseph Boakye Danquah-Adu, MP for Abuakwa North in the Eastern Region was murdered Tuesday night in his residence at Shiashie near East Legon, Accra, the Police have said.

The Police have found ladder suspected to have been used by the attacker(s) to scale the wall and get into the bedroom of the MP. There were bloodstains on the walls and footprints, which were believed to be those of the attackers, in the backyard.

The 50 year-old JB Danquah-Adu was a chartered accountant and a member of the New Patriotic Party. He was elected to Parliament 2004 and served as Deputy Minister for Women and Children’s Affairs in the John Agyekum Kufuor administration. He lost his parliamentary seat in the 2008 election, and won it again in 2012.

He was member of the Trade, Industry and Tourism Committee and a Special Budget Committee in Parliament.

The former MP was the grandson of the late J.B Danquah, the Ghanaian statesman, Pan-Africanist, scholar and historian, and one of the leaders of Ghana’s independence movement who formed the United Gold Coast Convention in 1947.

He is survived by a wife and two children.

Six persons were earlier invited by the police for questioning soon after the MP was pronounced dead at the Police Hospital in Accra. But five out of the six persons were said to have been released on Wednesday.

The Police, on Wednesday put a bounty of GH¢10,000 on the head of the MP’s killer for credible information that could lead to arrest.

Suspect Arrested

The Accra Regional Police Command, following a tip-off, arrested a man on Thursday, suspected to have killed the Member of Parliament. Three mobile phones, two of which were believed to belong to the late MP, were retrieved from the suspect.